ITS Systems: Servers, System Administration, and Co-location

ITS Systems staff are responsible for full support of Institute servers.

The Right Tool for the Job

Please consult with us before purchasing equipment, as we can help you source the best equipment to meet your needs.  For example, for mission-critical applications, slim, purpose-built rack-mount servers may have a slightly higher initial cost than tower computers, but are often more cost-, space-, and energy-efficient in the long run.

In some cases, you may not even need to purchase equipment!  Some needs can be met by existing Institute servers, and, in other cases, IST-hosted virtual servers and other solutions may be more efficient and cost-effective.  We can help you identify and access what's best for your work.

Care and feeding

We can work with Institute groups to establish server setup and maintenance agreements so that groups can focus on their research, programmatic, or business functions without having to spend effort on maintaining the underlying hardware, operating system, and services.  We can also assist with domain name registration and help you navigate campus DNS hosting and SSL

Data Center Co-location

Campus offers Data Center Co-location Service at the modern facility at 2195 Hearst Avenue.  If your workgroup has physical servers that require high availability, you'll want them in this staffed, secure location with backup power and redundant network connectivity.

ITS Systems staff oversees four complete racks that currently hold several dozen computers, with room for future expansion.  We also administer the firewall for our assigned subnet, so IP address assignment and firewall customization can happen quickly as well.

If you need colocation services, rather than opening a new account and a new work request with the Data Center, you can simply contact ITS Systems staff to arrange to add your equipment to our existing space.  We'll incorporate your proportional share of the modest monthly charges in the next billing cycle.